Book Review: Waking Up by Sam Harris

Most spirituality books ask you to accept a cosmology before they’ll teach you anything. Waking Up is Sam Harris’s attempt at the opposite: meditation, consciousness, and self-transcendence for people who want the goods without the metaphysics.

I read it in February 2020, and one idea from it has stayed with me ever since. More on that in a second.

Harris (neuroscientist, philosopher, professional debater) walks through meditation, the illusion of the self, gurus and their scandals, psychedelics, and what a spiritual life looks like once you subtract the supernatural.

What I Loved About Waking Up by Sam Harris

The thesis at the heart of this book is beautiful, and it matters: that spirituality is found “in reverence of the ordinary” — in the quality of attention you bring to your one actual, unglamorous Tuesday. I’ve read entire meditation books that hand you less than that single idea. It’s a critical thesis too, because it gives spiritual experience back to the people who assumed they’d been disqualified by their own doubt. For a book by one of the internet’s most committed skeptics, that’s a genuinely lovely place to land.

What I Didn’t Love About Waking Up

Sam Harris can be a bit dry. Stretches read like a lecture that wants you to know it was peer-reviewed — precise, careful, and a little starved for wonder. The material survives it. The momentum sometimes doesn’t.

Final Thoughts on Waking Up

Still a worthwhile read, with one asterisk on reading order: if meditation books are new territory for you, start with The Untethered Soul (my favorite in the genre) and come to this one when you want the same territory argued by a neuroscientist. For where Tolle fits into that stack, my Power of Now review is here.

My final score: 4 out of 5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Do I recommend this book? 👍 Yes — especially for the skeptics in the room.

🔥 A Deadly Trials Romantasy on Kindle Unlimited: The Ash Trials

Saffron Vale wakes in a ruined wedding dress, locked in a prison for the kingdom’s deadliest criminals — with no memory of who she is.

To survive the brutal Ash Trials, she must outlast shifters, spellcasters, and something even more dangerous: the truth about herself. Her only allies? A traitorous commander from her past and an assassin who swears she’s the real monster here.

The truth could save her — or destroy everything.

Get the book now on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited: